The Long Goodbye
by Niji Hitomi Kabra
Summary: It was time, years of work had put them on the brink of absolute change, but he simply couldn't have her in harm's way. Little did he know how stubborn she would be when it came to helping him. Warnings: character death, off-screen yaoi, mentions of off-screen discrimination and violence


**A/N:  
**Ok, minna! This is not my usual work, but this is something I wrote a LONG time ago. I mean, like we're talking about twelve years or so. I was digging through my old files and stumbled across a whole pile of these, and thought, why not? So, I polished it up, fixed the grammar and smoothed out the plot line a bit. Tell me what you think.

* * *

"What do you mean you think it's over for good?" The voice who spoke was a young woman, obviously not used to the racking sobs that threatened to break her control. Her voice broke with the strain of the unshed tears, "But, how can it be over? I still love you."

"And I still love you." His voice was hard, a little too hard for those soft words.

He shook his head after meeting her over-bright brown eyes, and he was forced to admit his own were a bit brighter than normal. He refused to give in to tears, however, because he knew if he did that he'd never be able to let go the way he knew he had to. But looking at her, the dying sun catching in the sophisticated curls of her sienna hair like a halo, almost made his resolve weaken.

She took his hands in hers when he turned away, trying to search his face, but he refused to look at her again, "Then why?"

"Because it has to be that way!" He shook off her grip, turned on his heel and walked away.

"But you promised..." She muttered in a surprisingly calm voice, and he acted like he hadn't heard.

_She doesn't understand_, he thought, _it's not her, it's me. I can't let anyone love me, and letting myself love her puts her in danger. Any one of my enemies could use her against me and they all know that it would kill me if anything happened to her._ His thoughts echoed until it became a mantra punctuated by each step he took: _I can't love her, if I do, they'll use it against me to hurt her. And I couldn't live with that. But I can't live without her; I love her so much._

He disappeared from view and she fell to her knees, sobbing. He pretended he didn't hear that either, and when night closed in, he shrouded himself in the persona of a man the rest of the world despised. He used the false face to set aside his own troubles, but if the tasks he completed for his superior were done a little more ruthlessly, with a harder edge, then so much the better for working out his personal frustrations. It wasn't easy, but portraying this role was essential in re-establishing order and peace around the globe. So, he shouldered the responsibility and pushed forward, knowing that it wasn't just her counting on him.

Dawn found him bloodstained, and weary, having avoided thinking for most of the night. When he was dismissed from service for the day, he almost broke character, but the flash of her face across his memory helped him stand firm. All he gave was a silent nod, and Disapparated home.

In the pearly, pre-dawn light, the grounds of the manor had never been more beautiful. The gardens were just about to bloom, the buds of the flowers swollen with promise, and the grass was freshly green, excited about the coming summer. The air was still a bit nippy but it held a promise of warmer days and easy living that the man in the mask hoped fervently was a portent of how things in the coming weeks would play out. They were so close, and the beautiful spring day seemed almost like the beacon of a lighthouse through stormy weather.

His feet took him unconsciously to his secret room. It smelled of hair gel, face soap, make-up and other 'beauty' products. There was a wall cabinet that had a mirror for a door and a small sink. Approaching the sink, he took out his contacts first. He used them to change the color of his eyes. Granted he could have used magic, but spells could be reversed or discovered, and the Dark Lord was not aware of current muggle cosmetics. A wizard, who had the right knowledge, could completely alter his appearance provided that the persona he planned to don was similar enough to his own. So, instead of using magic, he used 'magic' to become the world's most despised traitor.

He watched himself in the mirror, noting the crease in the corners of his eyes, the shadow between his revealed-silver brows, and his mouth became a grim line, as he continued to remove his disguise. _You're getting too old for this, Draco_.

No one could quite explain it. His blood-brother's betrayal had rocked the wizarding world to the point of paranoia. So long ago, and so unexpected. The word 'why' rattling in his brain a million times as things he didn't want to think about began to invade his thoughts. He shook his head after toweling off his face, but it did nothing to dissuade the memories flooding his mind. It was as clear today as it had been immediately after he escaped the Dark Lord's clutches.

He gripped the sink, shoulders hunched and he allowed himself to feel the pain for once. His mind's eye drifting back to that fateful night.

"What are we doing here, Harry?" He asked, looking around at the graveyard.

It was midnight on the one of the coldest October nights England had ever seen. There was frost and a light dusting of snow on the graves, giving the whole scene an eerie glow when the full moon peeked out between snow-heavy clouds. The shadows it cast on the frozen ground gave the impression of demonic sheep grazing just under the surface of the world.

"Just wait and see."

His blood brother's voice, cold and icy, like the wind that tried to tear the cloaks off their backs. Suddenly an evil laugh broke through the tension of the night, and it took Draco several minutes before he realized that Harry was the one who was laughing. When he did, confusion pinched his features, but that quickly disappeared under the weight of terror clutching at his soul. All he could do was stare at his blood-brother as Harry came toward him with a knife that glinted like unicorn's blood.

For the first time in his life, Draco Malfoy backed down from a fight. Since their bonding at the end of their sixth year at Hogwarts the man before him had been anything but an enemy. They didn't always get on perfectly but this was a possibility that never crossed his mind. He simply couldn't raise his wand against the one who was closer to him than even his own blood kin. So, under the threat of death he closed his eyes and dropped to the ground, willing to accept whatever punishment the Boy Who Lived dealt him.

The sickening sound of someone dying rang over his head out of nowhere. His entire body jumped to the side when a figure clothed in Death Eater's robes collapsed dead where he'd been standing a moment ago. He honestly didn't think his heart could beat that fast, but instantly his fear became fury. His eyes flashed and he snarled at his blood-brother.

"What the bloody hell were you thinking, Potter?!" He exclaimed, grabbing Harry by the shoulder.

He rocked back on his heels when Harry turned to stare at him. The other boy's emerald eyes flamed with a burning desire, and he stood holding the knife he'd used on the Death Eater ready, as though he were going to plunge it into Draco's ribs next. The air between them was palpable for several minutes, and the cold coil of dread threatened to paralyze the blonde man's spine once again. Now, he saw why Harry Potter was the most feared auror in the business. Unconsciously he shuddered, and it broke the tension.

Harry stepped back to wipe the blade in the moonlit grass, then said quietly, "I think I just saved your life, Malfoy."

The dark haired man growled the words with same intensity as he used on interrogating captured Death Eaters. It put Draco on edge, the almost sixth sense he used in taking down the Dark Lord's followers humming just beneath his skin. With every passing moment, he could feel his blood singing for the potential danger. He didn't know what exactly had raised his partner's hackles but the fact that they were was enough to make the pale blonde ready for anything…or so he thought.

Harry stood again and retrieved a second knife from within his robes to offer hilt first in a dragonhide sheath. "You would do well to carry one of these too."

"What is it?" Draco took it gingerly.

The handle was carved into the image of a large python, perhaps an anaconda. The snake's head was toward the blade, the cross bar in its mouth. Looking closely at the ruby eyes of the snake, they glinted as if with life under the moon. Each scale was meticulously carved, edged in gold and emerald dust, and drawing it revealed the same shimmering silver double-edge that had so recently felled the Death Eater behind him. It was unnaturally bright. Coated with something, perhaps.

He made a move to test the hone of the blade but Harry grabbed his hand, "I wouldn't do that if I were you. You wouldn't live to see the blood on your finger."

The words Draco had been planning to say died in his throat as he took in the swatch of stained skin illuminated in front of him where the brunette's robe had fallen away. There was a skull with a snake protruding from its mouth and coiling around itself in an all-too-familiar hiss climbing up his arm. Harry's eyes followed his blood-brother's and he turned his arm over to show fully reveal the tattoo.

"Harry!" Draco exclaimed, grabbing the wrist above the ink. "Th-that's the Dark Mark!"

"Congratulations, Captain Obvious." Harry sneered, then he recovered. "How do you think I've known about all the Death Eater meetings going on, Draco? You should know better than I about how important it is to keep up appearances."

Draco grew skeptical. He knew about the Potions Master playing a double roll, spying on Voldemort when the Dark Lord wasn't paying too much attention to him, but this new information about his blood-brother shocked and confused him. He had allowed this person into his house, into his family, especially after his father's betrayal.

His eyebrows knotted together in confusion. "Why would you tell me this now? Now, when someone might hear you?"

Harry only laughed, deeply and evilly. Draco eyed him up carefully, but his attention was quickly stolen by a noise behind him from the thick line of trees that ringed three sides of the graveyard. He dropped into a crouch, releasing his partner's wrist and offered the blade toward any attacker. He needn't have worried though as the creature that broke through the under growth was a large, _familiar_, black dog.

"Sirius!" He rocked back on his heels pulling the blade back. A large wolf also emerged from the trees, a silver amulet hanging from a silken ribbon around its neck. "Uncle! What are you two doing here?"

Sirius shifted forms so that he could speak, resting a hand on the ruff of the wolf with a fond smile for the pair, "We came to see if you boys needed any help."

Draco looked to Harry, who had somehow covered the tattoo, and the blonde willed himself back to the present, shaking his head violently in a futile attempt to forestall the next sequence of events. He finished cleaning up from his work, and donned the Malfoy family crest, ready to face a day of ridiculous fawning and governmental drivel. He sighed once more and left the small room with a final flick of his wrist to shut off the light.

Though he had left the darkness of his secret in the basement of his family's manor, the memories of That Night still tugged at his mind. As he took a small meal in his bedroom, he blamed it on the look of betrayal in her eyes when he told her. His heart hurt but he knew it was for the best. He was going in deeper from now on.

It was several weeks later before he allowed himself to remember the rest, once again facing the task of putting on another man's face, but hopefully, this was the last time. Because tonight was the night, the culmination of decades of work, sacrifice, and perseverance, or at least, it would be, if everything went according to plan.

He hadn't seen her since he had broken off, deliberately, so that his enemies couldn't connect them, but tucked in the corner of the mirror her picture smiled and waved at him. Even that image was enough encouragement for him to reach up and place the emerald contact lenses in his eyes. As his body went through the ritual, his mind wandered back to the events that had forced him to begin walking in the shoes of someone else half of the time.

Sirius clapped Draco on the shoulder, "You two seem to have everything under control. Just don't stay out too long eh?"

He shifted back into the form of Padfoot and never knew that his Godson had been the one to use the curse as the arc of electric green slammed into the black dog's back. With a cut off yelp, his life was snuffed out, and his body flew into the air, slamming through a gravestone in an explosion of bloodied rubble.

Moony howled over the death of his lover and turned enraged on the two younger men, the amulet around his neck vibrated with the effort of holding back the beast within the normally mild-tempered man. He bared his teeth and snarled, as Harry aimed his wand at Draco.

"How could you!?" The brunette screamed.

There was a stunned moment where the pale blonde was uncertain whether to get away from his supposed partner, or attack the man he knew without a doubt was responsible for Sirius' death. This hesitation was all that the werewolf needed as proof, and his sudden spike in fury shattered the amulet around his neck. Released from the charms that held back the beast, he charged at the two.

Words were of no use, but it seemed luck was with him as Draco rolled to the ground and Remus flew over his head, aiming for Harry. Whether the older man knew the truth, or the wolf could smell the charge of magick on the end of the brunette's wand, Draco never knew, but the suspicion that Remus must have known, helped to ease the pain of his uncle's death long after the knife had been removed.

He shook his head, a shiver of phantom pain running through his spine. He'd been suckered at that point. Harry had drawn him in with a sob story about how if he hadn't killed them Voldemort would have known he was a double agent. Disgust soured his belly. Basilisk poison had been forged into the blades, and though the fight between them had been bloody and short, the ironic thing was the knife was what gave him the upper hand.

Leaning against the sink, he spat the nasty taste from his mouth, unsure whether it came from the pit of his stomach or the glue he used to change the shape of his nose. His now green eyes and dyed eyebrows were enough to make him grit his teeth and curl his lip in a sneer. Fortunately, the coil of hatred that shone through his eyes was now a well-used excuse in his portrayal of the Boy Who Lived.

He'd brought the brunette back to his manor, to a cell just across the way from where he stood now. In fact, he could see the bars of the door over his shoulder. A select number of people had been allowed to view the interrogation, among those had been the current Minister of Magic and her. He would never have wished for her to see what they did to the man that had been one of her best friends in school, but she was the foremost mind on inventive magic. So, her presence had been required both as witness and as an on-the-spot reference when Harry had broken through their defenses a few times.

They knew that he'd died there, but to the rest of the world, Harry Potter reigned on, as second only to the Dark Lord himself. Muggles lived in fear, hidden away and kept as far out of sight as possible. Muggle-borns rarely if ever survived anymore. And pure-blooded wizards? Upon gaining a wand, they either joined Voldemort's minions, or ran away to join the Order of the Phoenix. But tonight it would all end. Midnight would bring about the fall of the Dark Lord and the return to peace. He swore it on his uncle's grave.

His disguise properly in place, and real enough to fool even Harry himself, he stormed out of his secret room past the cell where his blood-brother had resided. It was empty now but it still reeked of Harry's blood to his nose. He shuddered once more, checking that his knife was in place, hidden in the folds of his robe near his real wand. The one he used while disguised had been his former partner's; just one more detail to make the illusion complete.

Pausing near the secret exit in the dungeons he thought once more of her. Her alabaster skin, soft and tender; her ruby lips, caressing and gentle; and her eyes, her deep, expressive, sienna eyes. Her eyes had told him long before her lips did that she loved him, and what he wouldn't give to look into them just one more time. Steeling himself, he pushed through the door and out into the garden.

It had to be this way, he kept telling himself. He'd repeated it so many times that it hade become a mantra. He pushed her image out of his mind, tonight he needed to think clearly. Tonight he was going after big fish, and there was a very real possibility that he wouldn't survive it.

He'd planted ideas in the minds of the Inner Circle, whispered the inspiration for rebellion. With the help of the betraying Death Eaters, the Order finally had the firepower to take the Dark Lord down, and those that went against Voldemort were already given immunity for the crimes they'd been forced to commit as his pawns.

He knelt by his uncle, his god-father and his mother's graves, and prayed for a victory against the forces of evil. Then he Apparated to the exact field where it had all begun.

Standing in the brooding moonlight was the Master. He was tall, practically over seven feet, and he towered over his minions. His face was more human than it had been back while they were in school, but his eyes still held a glint of malicious evil. His terrible face split in a cruel smile as he saw the False Harry approach.

"Isss everything in posssition, Potter?" He hissed.

The False Harry smiled, and whispered, "Almost, Master. All we have yet to do is await the traitor, Malfoy's, appearance." Within his own mind he added, _that's one party I'll not be attending._

Once the congregation had all arrived, the False Draco appeared, Apparating in from the Order's hidden base of operations somewhere deep in the Transylvanian forest. Everyone knew the chance for survival of this mission depended on whether the combined forces of betraying Death Eaters and Order spies successfully overwhelmed the Dark Lord.

As Voldemort launched his plot on the False Draco, the False Harry turned to look at his followers, and gave them a curt nod of his head. They tightened their circle around the evil man and drew duplicates of the Basilisk envenomed knife as a single entity. By the time the Dark Lord knew what was happening he had five of the poisoned blades stuck into him.

As expected the toxin didn't work immediately, the way it would have on any other person, but the False Harry didn't let that shake his confidence. He twisted with the violently thrashing overlord, following the taller man's movements, while keeping one arm wrapped around the skinny neck and his knife embedded between the narrow ribs below Voldemort's left shoulder blade.

"Potter! You and I were the sssame!" The Dark Lord hissed, trying to twist around to look at his assailant.

"Yeah, you probably were," The False Harry whispered and magicked away his disguise, revealing platinum blonde hair and ice blue eyes, "It's a pity I'm not him."

Voldemort shrieked, "MALFOY!?"

Draco tore his blade from the Dark Lord's back, the force causing the two to stumble backwards. Then without much preamble, the pale auror plunged the knife again into the evil man, this time from around his shoulder and into the center of his chest. If there was one thing that could kill Voldemort, it was Basilisk poison, but it killed him slowly, and painfully, paralyzing from the second it entered the evil man's bloodstream.

Stepping away from the twitching, dying corpse, Draco snatched up the Elder Wand. He touched the tip with his own, and whispered, "Priori Incantatem."

The spirits of his loved ones and friends flew one after the other out of the wand. After a short time it began to shake even more violently than before as his mother emerged, several wizards he didn't know followed, then his father looking apologetic and before the spirit dissolved, the elder Malfoy reached for his son. His attention was pulled away, however, by the absolutely thrashing wand. It required all of his focus to hold onto the thing, and to his complete surprise, before the wand fell dead in his hand, Harry's soul wrenched itself from the tip.

The spirit hovered before Draco, heartbroken, "I would never have killed Remus and Sirius, you should know that, Dray."

Then he disappeared and the last of Voldemort's power followed. Still a bit shocked, Draco burned the wand, and slumped to the ground, suddenly exhausted. All around him, panic resounded, curses flew, and Order members Apparated in from all around the globe. Similar rebellions were happening where they came from, but many were more easily resolved than this one.

Draco watched numbly as bodies were picked up and laid in body bags to be buried; attempted escapees were caught in handcuffs or binding spells; wands were broken and burned; and around the world people began to rejoice as the clean-up brought all manner of folks out of hiding. Families were reunited, fiends found each other again, and as the dawn broke over the eastern horizon, the pale blonde man, closed his eyes to simply breathe, silently mourning the mantle of the man he'd never have to don ever again.

A flash of silver-blonde hair caught his eye, and immediately he began searching, somewhat hopelessly, for the man who had volunteered to take his place. Of course the Polyjuice potion would have worn off by now, but was he even still alive? There was a good chance he wasn't, but if he was, Draco had to tell him what Harry's spirit had revealed.

He'd just about given up, thinking that the man must have been killed when a hand tapped him lightly on the shoulder, and a feminine voice interrupted his thoughts. "Dray?"

He whipped around and couldn't stop the lurch in his heart, "What are you doing here!?"

She smiled slightly, with dirt and blood smearing her face and normally immaculate person. "I replaced Ron. I told him he should back you up with an extra knife in case somebody decided to switch sides again. So, I became you to distract Voldemort. Besides, he could never have pulled it off. We needed someone who could pretend to be you on top of having the potion and who knows you better than I do, Love?"

Draco couldn't argue, he'd learned that a long time ago. So he took her into his arms and kissed her soundly. He rested his chin on her hair, "I'm never going to be able to tell you goodbye, am I, Mudblood?"

"Nope," She smiled more broadly at the insult-turned-affectionate-nickname, "never."


End file.
